Staying in the Office...

Transfers are tomorrow!  I´m not going anywhere, haha.  Neither are Elder Rivadeneira or Elder Bingham.  Only Elder Olmedo, but that is because he is finishing his mission and returning home.  My ´´son´´ Elder Gomez is going to train this transfer and also be a district leader! My boy is growing up! haha.  On Wednesday we are supposed to have a worldwide missionary meeting with Elder Oaks.  It is going to be some kind of international broadcast to ALL missionaries.  We´ll see what that is all about.  

Last Thursday I had another trip to immigration.  But we only had to register three missionaries for residency.  We also had a mini missionary with us there.  He is from Zambrano (one of my old areas) and he was taking out his passport so he can send in his mission papers! Exiting!  While we were there, there was another elder waiting for his companion. While he was waiting, he took out one of those plastic recorder flutes and started playing church hymns...just in the middle of the waiting area in immigration haha.  I thought that one of the workers was going to get annoyed and tell him to stop, but they didn´t.  That was fun, and he wasn´t bad at all.  

On Saturday night, we get a text message at 10:30 from the 1st counselor in the bishopric asking if i could give a talk the next day! Talk about late notice, but it was fine. haha  It was open topic too.  I decided to talk about Charity because I like to talk about how we all need to serve and love each other and be happy.  Yay!  If you want to learn more about charity you should go study Moroni 7 and 1 Corinthians 13.  

Have a great week!

- Elder Burnham

¡HOLA! I hope you all had a great week.

¡HOLA! I hope you all had a great week.  I had another lovely day going to Immigration will 11 missionaries for their residencies.  But I was only there for 5 hours this time, haha.  I was with Elder Duncan because he was one of the missionaries taking out his residency.  The immigration building is right next to a big mall, so afterwards we went to JOHNNY ROCKETS! haha That is not somewhere I thought I would go eat while on my mission.  It was kinda pricey, but so worth it!  That day I completed an entire year in the mission field so we decided it was a good excuse to go eat there, haha.  I ate the most (and only) delicious BBQ bacon onion-ring pepper jack cheese burger in all of my mission.  So that made a stressful and boring day into a better one. 

As I mentioned last week, we are teaching Jina and her three sons.  Last Saturday, they were in the hospital because Luis (the mute son) had heart complication.  I didn´t quite understand what the problem was, but it sounded like he had a heart attack.  But that doesn´t make much sense for a 16 year-old boy to be having heart attacks.  It was some kind of stress/anxiety induced heart complication.  It must have not been a big deal because he was back later that night and was doing fine.  It was just a little stressful, but we should be able to go visit all of them again pretty soon. 

On P-day we went back down south to Sabana Grande to go cook pupusas at a members house with the missionaries that are serving down there (where Elder Alvarado is serving).  It was fun, we just got to hang out and kind of each take turns making pupusas.  They turned out pretty good, and we ended up with a ton of leftovers haha.  Later that day we went to this really random place that Elder Rivadeneira went to when he served in this area.  I am still kind of confused to what this place was supposed to be.  It was up on this hill where there are a ton of those giant wind turbines and you can see all of Tegucigalpa from a distance.  They had this giant cross that looked to be made out of old junk and car parts.  And little spots dedicated to different religions and philosophies like Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and others.  Then there was this little house/museum with random relics from the past and more religious artifacts I guess you could say.  The people that owned the place were LDS and had copies of the book of Mormon in various languages and pamphlets out on display too.  They also had donkeys walking around on the property and they kept coming up to us and were sticking their heads inside our car! haha.  It was a really random, but neat place that we would have never even had known existed if my comp hadn´t already known about it. 

Elder Olmedo goes home this transfer so we already have a new secretary training in the office.  He is Elder De la Rosa and is from Mexico.  He seems pretty cool.   Yep, transfers are next week, so life might be getting a little crazy pretty soon.  I probably will have two more transfers here in the office. We´ll see.  

Have a great week!

- Elder Burnham

Happy New Year! 01/05/16

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!  Yeah that was all a week ago and stuff.  I hope everyone had a good time.  Yup.  I got to eat two more times with the Christensen´s for Christmas and New Years.  The AP´s were invited for Christmas dinner, but one of them was busy in the office and couldn´t go, and that whole mission companion thing meant that someone else had to go.  Oh darn, I guess I had to go eat Elder Luquez´s meal and visit the Christensen´s haha.  We had the traditional ham with mashed potatoes and other delicious things. We were all invited the second time for New Years and had teriyaki chicken and rice. They like to cook things that you won´t come across in Honduras. 

We were just in our house on New Year's eve, but everyone in the world was setting off firecrackers and fireworks the whole night.  We have a pretty decent view from the house and the world went crazy at midnight. haha.   P-day was really boring because we didn´t really do anything. haha.  But P-day LAST week was pretty fun.  We went down to Sabana Grande and they have this little zoo.  They had lions and mountain lions and other neat animals.  I always find it so funny when I see a raccoon in a zoo as if it were some kind of rare or exotic animal.    

We are teaching this lady Jina, and her three sons, who are all teenagers.  I love them all.  She basically grew up going to church, but never really kept up with it, never was baptized.  She is one of those investigators that already feels like a member.  In fact, the second counselor in the bishopric thought she was a member and took her out of class so he could look for her records.  They had no luck. haha.  Her middle son is mute, so that has created an interesting perspective on how we should teach and communicate with him.  At first I thought that he was just a really quiet guy, but then I realized that he actually can´t speak.  Awkward on my part, but he is really awesome.  We talked to their neighbor and he ended up knowing Elder Torres (my trainer) when he was in this area. Neat.  

Yep, that´s all I can think of in this moment. haha.  Have a great week.  

Elder Burnham

 

P.S.  Tomorrow I will complete one year in the mission field. what?